Yosemite, Feb. 4-6, 2005

This past February I was attending a conference in San Francisco (the International Solid-State Circuits Conference), so myself and a few of my lab mates (Ani, Subhanshu, and Sudip) decided to head down a little earlier and make a side trip to Yosemite. We caught a flight out Friday morning at 6:20 am, arriving in Oakland around 8:30, where we picked up our rental car. The lady at the rental car place told me that I looked like Justin Timberlake, and that she was going to go home and tell all her friends that she had seen a star today. I was flattered, and even more excited by the fact that, as Justin Timberlake, I was dating Cameron Diaz. We arrived in Yosemite around noon, there was a lot of snow on the drive in, but luckily as we dropped into the lower elevation of the valley there wasn’t too much.

As we drove into the valley, we were treated to clear skies, and awe inspiring views of the big stone itself, seen below (El Capitan, of course):

We spent the afternoon doing some of the short hikes in and around the valley, to Bridal Veil falls, the base of Lower Yosemite falls, etc. Shown below is Subhi posing as a rugged adventurer below Bridal Veil falls:

We then went and set up our monster tent at Camp IV. Camp IV was pretty deserted, there was snow on the ground, but enough dry patches to find a spot for the tent. In the camp ground I held a slab climbing clinic, with all three students graduating with first class honours. Sudip and Ani are shown below demonstrating their technique:

The next morning Sudip, Ani, and Subhi went to look into doing some hiking, and I grabbed my thermarest (to use as a crash pad) and went to sample the fabled Camp IV bouldering circuit. I ended up meeting a guy with a crash pad who I climbed with a bit, it was really fun. Unfortunately, as I was by myself I don’t have any photos. I did a bunch of fun problems, but I can’t remember too many names. Bear Hug Mantle (V4) stood out as being a fun one, probably because it was ridiculously easy for someone of my height. All in all, I was impressed, the bouldering was pretty good, although it can’t hold a candle to Squamish.

The next morning we got up really early to go catch Half Dome in the early morning light. We got there in plenty of time, the only thing we didn’t take into account was that half dome faces north, and thus does not get any early morning light. So we took some photos of Yosemite Falls instead, shown below:

I then hiked up to the base of Lower Yosemite falls (see photo below), did some more bouldering, and then we packed in the car and headed back to San Francisco to listen to people spray about silicon.